| Sam's Story |
| This is Sam. Sam is 5 now (2005). We found him at the local Dealer's Yard. He was in a tiny stable with one other colt and had been bitten and kicked as he was the smaller of the two. My long suffering husband, Ray, had come with me to see what was on offer as he said he would buy me a new horse due to the fact that my elderly horse Cherokee, which incidentally, came on loan for two years and stayed for 13, had gone back to her owner. We actually walked past the two lovely coloured colts as we thought that Bruce, the dealer, would want mega bucks for him as he was coloured (Bruce again is from travelling stock). It turned out he only wanted GBP250.00 for him so we bought him and got a fiver back for "luck money" I walked him the two miles home. He was thin, covered in lice and full of worms. This poor little yearling put all his trust in me and we walked through the council estate past buses, broken glass and burnt out cars without a second glance. We got him home, bedded him down, booked the vet and the farrier, neither of which professions had ever glanced in his direction before. We wormed him, fed him (eventually as he didn't know what hard feed was) and groomed him. When we finally got all the encrusted muck from him, we found we had a better marked animal than we had thought with much more white than we believed he had. Over the years, Sam grew from a 12hh scraggy baby to the nearly 16hh magnificent beast that he is today (oh, and still growing), Ray had said of both TImba and Sam - they'll never make any height. Certainly never be big enough for him to ride. Humble Pie was on the menu and was eaten by him and enjoyed by me. We decided that we would send Sam away to be broken to drive. I had, through my dealings with Timba in the beginning and later with Tilly, met a marvelous trainer, Bev, who gave me so much encouragement both mentally, emotionally and physically, with whom I entrusted Sam's training. 6-7 weeks later, our "baby" came home nearly a man, and able to be driven. At three, we could obviously do very little with him and as I was looking forward to BDS drives the next year, we had a minor dilemma. The BDS insists that all driving horses attending their shows should be safe with others. Problem. No-one drove round our way so we couldn't really tell if he would be good or not. Our area commissioner Jan Martin and her indomitable husband, Den, very kindly invited us to Escrick Park where they brought their mare and we went for a drive. We went in front, behind and even when they decided they were going for a canter round the field, Sam just plodded on at a steady trot - well, he wasn't going to expend much energy was he? Since then, we had to break him to ride as I couldn't exercise him driven on my own. In our usual style, we went down the stables with a saddle and open bridle (he had seen neither before) and plonked them on him. He wasn't bothered so I put Ray up (well I wasn't gonna) and he was fine. Day 2 we long reined him to the field in his saddle and bridle and once again, Ray got on (well trained you see). I led him about a bit. He was fine. The next day, I got on and Ray put a lead rein on me as extra brakes should i need them, and we went to visit my riding trainer. No problems. The following day I rode out with my friend. Broken. Since then we have done very little with him. He hadn't been driven for about 8 months and certainly hadn't been ridden for 7 months and we decided this weekend (mid May 2005) we would bring him back into work. I long reined him round the village and he seemed to remember it all, so I put him to and off we went. In the words of Pa Larkin PERFICK! |
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